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Phylogenetic estimation using Maximum Likelihood

PhyML is a software that estimates maximum likelihood phylogenies from
alignments of nucleotide or amino acid sequences. It provides a wide
range of options that were designed to facilitate standard phylogenetic
analyses. The main strengths of PhyML lies in the large number of
substitution models coupled to various options to search the space of
phylogenetic tree topologies, going from very fast and efficient methods
to slower but generally more accurate approaches. It also implements
two methods to evaluate branch supports in a sound statistical framework
(the non-parametric bootstrap and the approximate likelihood ratio test).

PhyML was designed to process moderate to large data sets. In theory,
alignments with up to 4,000 sequences 2,000,000 character-long can
be analyzed. In practice however, the amount of memory required to process
a data set is proportional of the product of the number of sequences by their
length. Hence, a large number of sequences can only be processed provided
that they are short. Also, PhyML can handle long sequences provided that
they are not numerous. With most standard personal computers, the “comfort
zone” for PhyML generally lies around 3 to 500 sequences less than 2,000
character long.